I just started MP this week. Got annihilated first few games. Found this site and started reading Morte's strategies. Won a few with spain. met some good peeps. anyways i got a msg from an $@#% today, telling me "to grow the f up." I asked what he was talking about, he said i knew.

Well I didn't know. He claimed I have a bad rep for freezing.

I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FREEZE.

If I am doing it, please tell me what causes it, or how not to do it. If I am it is by Accident.

Honestly, I think someone I PO'd, gave me this rep. I do tend to cuss about getting rushed early. But players are leaving games, or avoiding me. I just want to climb the ranks FAIRLY.

Well, I talked to some friends about it. My Gamer Rep. is at a 3 star rating. BrightonEarlyTM ASSumed this was because I freeze games. Truth is CivRev is only the 2nd game I've ever MP. RDD is the 1st. The star rating lowers if you play lower star players. I've never checked ratings, I just like to play. I'm just not like everyone else, today. Example, my FB friends are people I actually knew before FB.

As for freezing, yes it happens a lot. Sometimes somebody freezes on purpose. Sometimes the game just freezes up. Sometimes it does that at highly suspicious points in the game. But think about it. When would it not be suspicious to one party or the other? Somebody is always thinking "now I've got him right where I want him." Generally both sides are thinking that so it freezes and now they both think the other guy did it. So recognize that there are some cheats out there who will freeze when they are losing but most freezes aren't intentional.

The best way to avoid freezing is to keep your Internet connection clean (i.e. don't play while somebody else is streaming Netflix over the same line) and to quit back out to the xbox menu and reload the game after every game. This flushes your memory and makes freezes less likely.

There are a couple of other things that can cause freezes. If you hit the bumper to pull up the diplomacy menu after you've ended your turn and another player is just ending his turn at the same time, that will often cause the game to freeze (until you quit). If you need the diplo menu after you've ended your turn, first go into a city screen or activate a unit which will put you back on the clock. Then you can use diplomacy safely.

The other thing is what we call adviser clash. If two of your stupid advisers should appear at the start of a turn in MP, that will often cause your console to freeze up and boot you from the game (it doesn't freeze the game, just kicks you out). The most likely occurrence of this is if a capital falls the same turn you change government. At the start of the next turn your stupid military adviser will smack into Condi Rice and your console will have a seizure. Obviously I would have liked an option to disable the advisers. So anyway, if you take an enemy capital that gives you a government (like taking Tripoli and getting Fundamentalism), don't switch into anarchy right away. Wait until the following turn and you should be fine.

MP is a blast. We also run tournaments and stuff over at the 2k forums.